Prince Saud al-Faisal has been foreign minister of Saudi Arabia for 40 years. He doesn’t make rookie mistakes. When he says something in public, he means what he says.

That’s why it’s worth scrutinizing his comments at a joint news conference in Riyadh on Thursday with Secretary of State John Kerry. The secretary was there to persuade the Saudis and the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—not to accept the gospel according to Bibi Netanyahu on the subject of nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Prince Saud unequivocally distanced his country from the maximalist position taken by the Israeli prime minister: that Iran should not be allowed to pursue any nuclear-related activities and that any agreement the United States and its negotiating partners might make that would permit Iran to retain some nuclear capability would be a dangerous mistake. In his opening remarks, without being asked, Prince Saud that the kingdom supports the effort of the P5+1 to reach a deal that would limit Iran’s nuclear facilities and subject them to intrusive international inspections while “maintaining Iran’s right—and all countries of the region’s right—to the peaceful use of nuclear energy,” provided that they comply with the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Given Saudi Arabia’s commitment to develop its own large-scale nuclear power program, the foreign minister could hardly have said otherwise, and he was merely restating well-known Saudi policy. But coming just two days after Netanyahu’s controversial appearance before the U.S. Congress, in which he said that the Obama administration appeared ready to accept an agreement that would facilitate Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and right after his meeting with Kerry, Prince Saud’s words had particular resonance.

But his statement does not mean that Saudi Arabia under its new king has modified its hostility to, or fear of, Iran. On the contrary, he laid it out in full view when he was asked about the current campaign by Iraqi forces and their allies to retake the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) and about reports that Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, is coordinating the campaign.

“The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we are worried about,” Prince Saud said. “Iran is taking over the country.” He didn’t say that “Iran is interfering in Iraqi affairs” or “exerting undue influence,” but “Iran is taking over the country.” With those six words, he made explicit the fear that the Saudis have felt ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 opened the door to Iranian influence in a Shia-controlled Baghdad. The Saudis opposed the U.S. invasion for just that reason.

Saudi Arabia has never made any secret of its concerns about Iranian influence in Iraq, but the overt role of the formerly shadowy Suleimani in the Tikrit campaign seems to have stirred new anxieties. Suleimani is almost a legendary figure in the region, exerting broad influence while staying in the background. His alleged feats on Iran’s behalf, detailed in a New Yorker profile, reached such proportions that a Saudi commentator wryly referred to him as “Qassem Supermani.”

The spread of Iranian—meaning Shia—influence in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as Iraq, is one reason the Saudis have not supported the Obama administration’s quest for a nuclear deal. They believe that the United States is pursuing that single objective, and seeking a single-focus deal—and hoping to use that single-issue deal as the foundation of an overall rapprochement with Tehran—while failing to confront Iran’s other activities. “That is really the main concern of the Gulf Cooperation Council,” Saud al-Faisal said—that the P5+1 would be satisfied with an agreement on the nuclear issue “at the expense of forgetting everything else that Iran does.” He said the Saudis “are, of course, worried about atomic energy and [an] atomic bomb. But we’re equally concerned about about the nature of action and hegemonistic tendencies that Iran has in the region.”

On that point Kerry told them what they wanted to hear.

“The first step is to make sure that the [the Iranians] don’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said. But if a nuclear deal is reached, “nothing else changes the next day with respect to our joint commitment to stand up against any other kind of interference or violation of international law or support for terrorism. And Iran remains a labeled state supporter of terrorism. So those efforts will continue.” He pledged that the United States and its allies “will not take our eye off Iran’s other destabilizing actions in the region.”

Prince Saud said that Kerry had been “very clear in the assurances he gave the country” on this subject, but he did not say whether he and King Salman were convinced. In fact, the Tikrit campaign in Iraq appears to have created new anxieties in Riyadh because of the uncomfortable position in which Washington finds itself there. On the one hand the United States is supporting Iraq’s fight to retake territory from IS, and has been conducting air strikes against IS forces. But on the other, the Tikrit campaign has made Suleimani and the Iran-supported Shia militias doing much of the fighting into de facto, if unwelcome, allies.

The campaign to retake Tikrit is “Iraqi-designed, Iraqi-led,” Kerry said. “Is General Suleimani— has he been on the ground, is he playing a role? The answer is yes. We’ve got information to that effect.” But the United States has been assured by Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi that the Iraqis are in charge and are coordinating the campaign with local tribal leaders. “Everybody has known that there are some movements of Iranian forces, both in and out of the northern part of Iraq, who have been engaged with the fighting from the very beginning. But it is not coordinated. We are not coordinating with them,” Kerry said.

The United States and Iran are seeking the same objective, on the same ground, against the same foe, and each is reportedly using open radio frequencies that the other can monitor. To the Saudis, “not coordinating” may sound like a distinction without a difference. To them, as Prince Saud made clear, Iran’s activities outside its own borders are responsible for the region’s troubles, and those activities “must stop if Iran is to be part of the solution of the region and not part of the problem.”

Thomas Lippman

Thomas W. Lippman is a Washington-based author and journalist who has written about Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy for more than four decades, specializing in Saudi Arabian affairs, U.S.- Saudi relations, and relations between the West and Islam. He is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Washington Post, and also served as that newspaper's oil and energy reporter. Throughout the 1990s, he covered foreign policy and national security for the Post, traveling frequently to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. In 2003 he was the principal writer on the war in Iraq for Washingtonpost.com. Prior to his work in the Middle East, he covered the Vietnam war as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Saigon. Lippman has authored seven books about the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, where he serves as the principal media contact on Saudi Arabia and U.S. – Saudi relations.

Virgile makes a very good point, but the Saudis are not Shia, and they don’t like them? Of course, haven’t the Saudis been involved in some of the mischief that’s going on in Iraq and elsewhere in the M.E.? I wonder what this does to the agreement between Israel & Saudi Arabia allowing Israel to overfly Saudi airspace? Rather a strange situation, especially considering the Saudis plan on building a bunch of Nuclear power plants. I wonder if the Iranians might be a source of fuel rods for the Saudis? Now that would be a switch. Might also be why Netanyahoo is so fired up about not having Iran the ability to refine Uranium to make fuel rods. One might get the impression that’s the real reason for the all this bluster from the Bibi? Getting frozen out of the market-energy-that is.

It is interesting that Prince Saud didn’t even mention that he and Prince Bandar Bush were responsible for the creation of ISIS to begin with! Now SA has realized that atrocious actions of their own creation have backfired and ISIS has become a common enemy of US, Iraq, Iran, Syria and may be Lebenan! The Saudis have no solution to their own created problem and they hate to see ISIS being defeated by Shi’is which mean the Shi’is are going to gain more strength in that region! In other words, the Saudis are embarrassed for their own actions because of ever expanding of Shi’is ruling over the Sunnis and it is spreading very fast specially when ISIS gets destroyed.

It sounds like the Saudis are sitting there wringing their hands and they have no idea what to do or what outcome they would like to see occur. Hmm, which is worse, ISIS or Iran? I have read the Saudis are building a 600 mile “Great Wall of China” type of thing to keep ISIS out of their country. I have read the Saudis are paying ISIS to NOT attack them. Boy, they must be sweating it now.

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